Rattle Can Sociology

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Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I are teaching Making Social Change for the third time this semester. Last week, we worked through Indian independence, and students learned to spin roving into yarn with drop spindles they created using laser-cut whorls, dowels, and cup hooks.

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This week , we explore the radical democracy and political art of the Zapatista movement, after which students create stencils of an issue of their choice using the laser cutter. Mario Galvan, a local activist who has done work with the EZLN, shared his story with our students and showed images and videos of his visits to the caracoles of Chiapas.

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After Mario’s talk, students set to work creating stencils with the ever amazing Stencil Creator, after which we went out to the backyard and got out the rattle cans.

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This is our third time out for this class, and we try to expand/enhance/adapt the course each time we teach it. This year, we’re adding a field trip to The Creation District, which provides creative programming for youth experiencing homelessness, and we’re working to incorporate escape room mechanics into the final projects that students complete. Always be prototyping.

Making Social Change v2.0

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You Are Here

We are here.  Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I are co-teaching v2.0 of Making Social Change, a hands-on course at the intersection of making and Sociology, in which we explore social movements and the ways that they use tools to enact change. We teach the class in the makerspace, and we’re working with a brave cohort of interesting students. We’ve been tweaking and adapting the content, activities, and flow, building on what we learned offering a prototype of the course in fall of 2017.

So far, we’ve spoken with Ivan in South Africa, a friend of Diane’s and an ANC activist who fought against apartheid…

Talking to a South African Activist

…worked with the laser cutter and 3D printer to create a Harriet Tubman stamp to perfect a twenty dollar bill…

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…and discussed memory and monument, working through James W. Loewen’s ideas in Lies Across America…

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…and creating prototypes for potential monuments to be built on our college campus.

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How Many Bubbles in a Bar of Soap?

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Diane Carlson (Sociology professor, and co-creator of Making Social Change) and I finally got around to building out version 2.0 of the Wheel of Voter Fortune Diane created as part of the Making Across the Curriculum faculty professional development academy from summer of 2016.  Diane uses the wheel with her students to help them develop an understanding of voter suppression.  Building upon Diane’s original prototype, we added a mask so that only one segment of the wheel would be revealed.

How Many Bubbles?

We also created a control panel to hold a switch and batteries…

Wheel of Voter Fortune control plate

…and used a piece of copper wire and an LED to create a flexible lamp.

Wheel of Voter Fortune v2

Ideas for version 3 include interchangeable question wheels, and maybe some elaborate game show lights and sounds!

Making and Advocacy in Action

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Fired up by the sewing lab from a few weeks back, one of our Making Social Change groups ran with the quilt theme, creating an A-Z of Planned Parenthood quilt as their final group project. They used the laser cutter to cut various shapes and letters, and employed a variety of techniques, including embroidery and applique, to create their squares, and PVC pipe to assemble the frame.  Here they are putting the finishing touches on their project.

Preparing for Visit from Planned Parenthood

On Thursday, December 7, representatives from Planned Parenthood tabled outside the Falcon’s Roost, and our students staffed the booth and displayed their quilt. They got a lot of foot traffic, answered a lot of questions, and distributed lots of literature, including some from built-in pockets on the quilt.

Planned Parenthood!

It’s great to see our students using their skills and passion to take a project from idea to application, and this project is a perfect example of exactly what we hoped would be the outcomes of this course when it was just some ideas on a whiteboard back in 2015.

Making Monuments

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The theme for week eight of Sociology 379: Making Social Change was “memory” and its role in social movements.  We used timely news coverage of the controversy surrounding Confederate statues as a leaping off point for a discussion about monuments, using James W. Loewen’s “Ten Questions To Ask At A Historic Site” to frame the conversation.

We talked about a variety of examples, including EJI’s Community Remembrance Project, the Bussa Emancipation Statue, many from the San Antonio peaceCENTER’s gallery of Peace & Justice Monuments, and the relocation of Negro Hill Cemetery, an example from our very own backyard.  We also spent some time on the aesthetics and the design of monuments, including the role of light and shadow, scale, and subject matter.

Students were then presented with a mock RFP:

The Carlson Dowell Social Justice Foundation is seeking proposals for a monument – a permanent public art piece – to be installed at Folsom Lake College in spring 2018.  The monument will occupy a 50’x 85’ footprint adjacent to the Falcon’s Roost.  Whether your goal is to memorialize or celebrate an important social justice issue, your proposed monument must also educate, in keeping with the college’s mission.  The installation must also be interactive, encouraging students and the public to actively participate and interact with the work.

Specifications for the prototype included that it be free-standing, crafted at 1:24 scale, include at least one digital fabrication element – an object created/modified using the laser cutter, CNC, vinyl cutter, or 3D printer – and that it incorporate LED lighting.

Making Monuments Challenge

We took a walk out to the proposed monument site so that students would have a sense of the scale and surroundings.  Back in the lab, students set to work on their proposals.  In a very short time – about 2 hours, really – groups were able to craft some really thoughtful proposals and interesting prototypes.

David, Clarity, and Luna developed their proposal around the idea of differences and commonalities among Folsom Lake College students.  Their prototype was based on a maze concept, with many paths leading to a central common ground.

Making Monuments

Another group developed their proposal around issues of food distribution and food insecurity.  They incorporated a greenhouse into their prototype, using www.makercase.com to generate the cut file, and the laser to cut the parts from clear acrylic.  Here Nusaybah and Micaela are preparing to solvent weld the pieces together.

Putting the Greenhouse Together

Zainub, Heather, Jeremy, and Kila based their design on a View-Master Viewer, and were able to modify a Custom View-Master Disc they found on Thingiverse (CC BY TheHeadlessSourceMan), which they cut from wood using the laser.

Prototype of Interactive Monument (Based on a Viewmaster Viewer)

As the final step in the process, groups shared their proposals and prototypes and took questions from their peers.

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We’ve got a great group of students, and I’m continually impressed by their open, collaborative, and creative approach to the course.

Analog Fabrication

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One of the most important outcomes for our Making Social Change is that students leave the class empowered to use a variety of tools.  While our focus so far has been on digital fabrication tools – for instance, using the laser cutter to create stencils – we also want students to leave the class with proficiency in more traditional ways of making, including electric and hand tools.

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After some background and safety information, including the use of PPE, we took students out in back of the Innovation Center, where they each had the opportunity to work with a miter saw, band saw, drill press, sanding station, driver/drill, radial saw, Dremel, jigsaw, reciprocating saw, and a variety of hand tools.

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Some students were already proficient in using one or more tools, and they provided support and guidance for their less experienced classmates.

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Students left class with basic proficiency in additional ways of making that they can employ in their final group projects, and in their collaborative class project, a prototype of a large scale, interactive public installation that will represent the social movements we’ve learned about.

Sewing Social Change

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Inspired by our class visit to the Rocklin Mini Maker Faire, where the bulk of our time was spent in the open sewing lab, we spent a recent session of Making Social Change creating applique quilt squares for a collective class quilt.  The Theater Arts Department loaned us seven machines to add to the one we have in the Innovation Center, and were able to borrow a few others from students and faculty so that each student would have one to work with.  Students started by selecting fabric from a beautiful trove of fabric samples (generously provided by our faculty researcher Jill Bradshaw) and used the laser cutter to cut out 12″ background pieces.

Sewing for Social Justice

We set up two ironing stations so that students could apply Mistyfuse backing, after which they cut applique shapes and words using the laser cutter (and sometimes good old fashioned scissors).

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T is for Transgender

We had a few folks with sewing experience, and some with none, but students helped each other, and Diane was around to provide guidance and pointers.

U Is For Uterus

Overall a very empowering and dynamic class session! Here’s a gallery of Diane Carlson’s (Sociology) photos from the day:

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Further Adventures in Fabric

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A couple of additional laser + fabric experiments…

Our first fire! 🙂  Here we were cutting very fine letters, and it was a little too much for the fabric to handle.

Burnt

Here’s FLC’s Feminist Alliance logo on some contrasting fabric.

Feminist Alliance in Fabric

Our next step will be to try the process with fusible appliqué paper.

Stenciling Social Change

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In Making Social Change today, we talked about Zapatistas and the Chiapas conflict, and the role of symbols and murals and art in political and social movements.  Based on social justice issues important to them, students then created stencils using Stencil Creator and cut them out of card stock using the laser cutter.  They spent the rest of the class spray painting their stencils on a makeshift gallery structure Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I created out of leftover metal shelves and an old scaffold that’s been out behind the Innovation Center for a decade or more.

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F*ck the Gender Binary!

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Great students, great class!

Make Your Own Stencil!

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This week in Making Social Change we’re looking at the Zapatista movement.  One of the themes we’ll have some discussion around is political symbolism, and the use of imagery in social movements, including the various images of Subcomandante Marcos (in his ski mask and sometimes with his pipe) that came to symbolize the EZLN.

Resiste Corazón (Póster)

By Rexistemx (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This morning I prototyped a class activity around using the laser cutter to create stencils.  One of the challenges of the course is finding ways to make some of the prerequisite skills of digital fabrication – chiefly vector graphic creating and editing – more accessible to a group of students with varying levels of digital media creation skills.  Enter Stencil Creator, a sophisticated web-based stencil maker.  Upload an image to Stencil Creator, and the robust toolset enables some of the same sorts of functionality found in Illustrator’s Image Trace function.  The system outputs files in *.svg format, and after just a few tweaks in Illustrator – haven’t yet found a way to take it out of the workflow entirely – the stencil can be sent to the laser cutter.  Here’s one of the test cuts, featuring bass hero and DIY champion Mike Watt:

Laser Watt

Positive and Negative

Mike Watt Stencil Progress

Watt closes his shows with a call to “Start your own band! Paint your own picture! Write your own book!” so I added “Make your own stencil!”  I think D. Boon would be pleased.

Brother Watt Reminds Us